HOW OLD IS THE ENGLISH GLOTTAL STOP?
The discussion of the English glottal stop by Christophersen (1952) and O'Connor (1952) motivated Anatoly Liberman to reconsider the problem of its origin (1972). The main difficulty is that 'neither in RP, nor in the dialects can the glottal stop ever differentiate meaning,' so that 'we must trace whether the glottal stop has not yet achieved relevancy or already lost it' (Liberman 1972:50, 51). In his later work, Liberman definitely opts for the second possibility (1982:237). Here I intend to make clear why I agree with this view in spite of the fact that I do not subscribe to his accentological theory.*
In his survey of the earlier literature, Andresen comes to the conclu-sion that 'there is strong evidence in favour of the view that about 1860 the phenomenon of pre-glottalization existed only in a few dialects in Western Scotland' (1968:24). However, itis clear from his examples that this Statement refers to the glottal stop which replaces [p, t, k], not to the concomitant glottal closure which accompanies these sounds in more widespread varieties of English. As Andresen points out himself, it is 'not impossible that pre-glottalization started äs a characteristic feature of a certain class dialect, viz. the dialect of the working classes in the big industrial areas1 (1968:29). The spread of the replacing glottal stop and its social Stigma adequately account for the 'increasing space given by phoneticians from about 1920 onwards to the treatment of the glottal stop' (Andresen 1968:34), but this does not indicate that the 'reinforcing' glottal closure of ['p, 't, 'k] 'is actually on the increase among educated people' (ibidem). In fact, there is evidence to the contrary.
glottalization went unnoticed because it was not distinctive. We may therefore have a look at the comparative evidence.
The comparison of the English glottal stop with the Danish st0d is commonplace. There are two varieties of st0d in Danish. The Standard Danish st0d appears in monosyllables which have an acute pitch accent in Swedish and Norwegian. Though its distribution has partly been obscured by analogical levelings, it seems clear that it developed from a falling tone movement. The so-called vestjysk st0d of the western dia-lects is an entirely different phenomenon because it is characteristic of original polysyllables which have a circumflex accent in Swedish and Norwegian. It cannot be connected with the Jylland apocope because it is also found in the northeastern part of vestfynsk dialects, where the apocope did not take place. In his monograph on the vestjysk st0d, Ringgaard concludes that 'the v-st0d is only found immediately before the plosives p, t, k, and that it is found wherever these stand in an original medial position, following a voiced sound in a stressed syllable. The exceptions to this are certain types of loan-words from a later period' (1960:195). He dates the rise of the vestjysk st0d to the twelfth Century because it is characteristic of 'all then existing medial plosives' (1960:199). The view that the vestjysk st0d is a spontaneous Innovation of the westernmost dialects of Danish, which Jespersen had in fact already proposed almost half a Century earlier (1913:23), can hardly be called an explanation. Moreover, it does not account for the vestjysk st0d in the isolated pocket of dialects on the island of Fyn, which suggests that it is a retention rather than an innovation. The hypothesis of a local origin also neglects the parallel development of preaspiration in Icelandic and of the glottal stop in English.
Old English wice, dropa, scip. Secondly, mp, nt, nk yielded pp, tt, kk in the larger pari of Scandinavia. This development becomes under-standable if we assume that the nasal consonant was devoiced by the preaspiration of the following plosive and subsequently lost its nasal feature. Thirdly, *k was geminated before *j and *w, e.g. in Old Norse bekkr 'brook', r<l>kkr 'dark'. Similarly, *t was geminated before */' in a limited area, e.g. Swedish sätta 'to set'. (West Germanic geminated all consonants except r before *j and is therefore inconclusive.) Fourthly, the stops p, t, k were geminated before / and r in West Germanic, e.g. English apple, bitter, cf. Gothic baitrs. The same development is found sporadically in Scandinavia, which suggests that we are dealing with the loss of an archaic feature rather than with an Innovation. Here again, the geminate may have originated from the assimilation of a glottal stop to the following plosive.
Thus, I propose that the English glottal stop directly continues the glottalic feature of the Proto-Germanic preglottalized stops. The gemi-nation in Old High German offan Open', wazzar 'water', zeihhan 'token' also suggests a complex articulation for the Proto-Germanic voiceless plosives from which they developed. The origin of the gemination is unexplained in the traditional doctrine. If we Start from the assumption that the Proto-Germanic plosives were preceded by a glottal stop which is preserved in the vestjysk st0d and the English glottalization, the High German sound shift can be explained äs a lenition of the plosives to fricatives with a concomitant klusilspring of the preceding glottal stop. Note that the High German sound shift has a perfect analogue in the English dialect of Liverpool, where we find e.g. [kx] in can't, back (Hughes and Trudgill 1987:66), which again remains unexplained in the traditional doctrine.
represent a purely graphical phenomenon does not explain the short vowel reflexes in later northern English.
It now turns out that the English language offers perhaps the most straightforward evidence for the theory that the unaspirated voiced stops of the Indo-European proto-language were actually glottalized. It follows that the preglottalization which can now be assumed for Old English föt 'foot', nacod 'naked' can be identified with the glottal stop which is attested in Latvian/?|ds 'footstep', nuögs 'naked'. The antiquity of the English glottal stop is corroborated by glottalization in Danish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Armenian and Sindhi, and supported by indirect evidence from Indo-Iranian, Greek, Latin and Slavic (cf. Kortlandt 1985). This exemplifies once more the importance of re-examining time and again the primary data in linguistic reconstruction.
Cobetstraat 24 NL-2313 KC Leiden The Netherlands
*I am indebted to Dirk Boutkan and Rolf Bremmer for references to the litera-ture.
Bibliography
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